Robbie Birkner’s Blog

Archive of "HEXONET" Category

HEXONET’s popular EOI (expression of interest) system allows clients to earmark, inventory, and prepare for the impending release of hundreds of valuable future ICANN NewTLDs.

Vancouver, CANADA – September 27, 2012 – HEXONET GmbH (www.hexonet.net) announced today the release of its Expression of Interest (EOI) system to handle the burgeoning demand for yet-to-be-released new Top-Level-Domains (NewTLDs) from ICANN. With the cost and value of domain names rising, businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs are already looking for ways to be first in line as these domains are released. HEXONET’s EOI system takes nonbinding requests on future domain names to ensure clients are immediately notified and informed on the status of their requests, as well as, start a pre-order on any domain as they are approved by ICANN and made available by their respective registry.

“HEXONET has a long history of having industry leading domain systems and platforms, including pre-registration systems, which have been leveraged by our clients to obtain thousands of premium domains in the past”, said Robert Birkner, HEXONET’s Chief Strategy Officer. “The EOI system is built on top of our highly successful pre-registration platform, which will ensure that any EOI registered name can easily transition into our renown pre-registration system as ICANN approves certain NewTLDs.”

The initial set of ICANN NewTLDs available through HEXONET’s EOI system contains geographic and generic extensions. More NewTLDs will be added to the EOI system in the coming months.

I am extremely pleased to share our latest Press Release with you. I have personally known Darshaun for > 10 years now, who has become a good friend. He is a great individual with an awesome team in Japan. We just spent a week of amazing meetings together with some very interesting potential clients in Japan!

Exclusive distribution partnership will deliver the most comprehensive set of Japanese language domain services and support for registrars, resellers, and hosting companies in the country of Japan.

Vancouver, CANADA – September 18, 2010 – HEXONET GmbH (www.hexonet.net) announced today an exclusive distribution agreement with WIXI Inc. of Japan. The agreement gives WIXI exclusive rights to provide HEXONET’s industry leading domain platforms and services to Japanese registrars, resellers, and hosting companies. WIXI’s extensive knowledge and experience in the Japanese market will be leveraged to completely transform HEXONET’s technology to perfectly meet the higher support and language specific needs of Japanese companies.

HEXONET has been rapidly growing and now services over a million domains on behalf of its registrar and reseller clients around the world. Innovative technology has always been the key to the company’s success, like its newest service, an Expression of Interest (EOI) service platform, which allows API based reservation of any thousand new pending gTLD offerings from ICANN. Though technology is critical for resellers and registrars, in some countries, language trumps technology, not matter how good it is. And for these countries, HEXONET needs to find the right partner. For Japan, the perfect partner is WIXI Inc.

“Japan is an interesting and ripe market for HEXONET, however a very difficult one to conquer,” said Robert Birkner, HEXONET’s Chief Strategy Officer. “The President of WIXI, Darshaun Nadeau, is a renown expert on the Japanese domain market, his knowledge and his team’s experience will be able to build the relationships and provide the services in Japanese like no one else; this partnership allows HEXONET to focus only on delivering the best technology, which is exactly what we do.”

Darshaun Nadeau, President of WIXI Inc. believes the partnership between the two companies is perfectly matched for the Japanese market. According to Darshaun, “HEXONET is the most functional, reliable, and fastest registrar platform of its kind and is the platform of choice for WIXI’s itself; together we are going to dominate the Japanese market.”

Written by Patrick McCleery, Sales Manager North America and Asia/Pacific at HEXONET

HEXONET recently added .CO.ZA, the official ccTLD of South Africa, to our portfolio of international domain extensions. And with the release of .CO.ZA, HEXONET resellers have already responded with a strong uptake in domain registrations of the ccTLD.

Facts about CO.ZA:

UniForum is the domain registry operator for the extension and has over 700, 000 registrations.

Over 95% of all .ZA domain registrations are under the CO.ZA extension.

A large percentage of all African domain registrations for the entire continent are actually CO.ZA domains.

UniForum is looking to expand and has applied for new gTLDs dotAfrica, dotCapetown, dotDurban and dotJoburg.

Insights into CO.ZA:

HEXONET was lucky enough to speak to a prominent South African domainer Mr. Darryl Lopes. We want to thank Mr. Lopes for taking the time to share his thoughts on .CO.ZA.

HEXONET Q1: Can you please let our readers know a little about your background and how you got involved as a domainer, as well as, what your involvement is with www.thedomains.co.za?

Darryl Lopes:

Firstly, it’s great news that HEXNET has .CO.ZA domains available to register, so it’s good to shine light on the .co.za domain space. Welcome!

I studied web design in college, wanting to develop websites for small businesses, family members and myself. While reading and researching on the Internet I found a blog by Danny Batelic, a guitarist turned domainer http://www.tradingwebsitesblog.com and I read that he did not even have to build websites to make them valuable, he bought and sold domains and flipped them for a profit. I realized that a domain name itself has value and they are unique. I thought that if he could do it then so can I! I bought domains, read domain blogs and news and watched videos. I started learning from the best in the business, the likes of Rick Schwartz, Frank Schilling, Elliot Silver, Michael Cyger, Michael H. Berkens as well as a special mention to Gavin Durni, a heavy hitter in the .CO.ZA domain market, they have been most influential to me as a domainer. They were open to share information on their blogs and even through email. My first success with domaining was picking up a deleted domain on a “drop day” and I found the right buyer. I picked up payyou.co.za and sold it four months later to payu.co.za PayU Intelprop Holdings Limited, owned by Naspers for $3,000. That got me hooked and helped fund me getting online, getting a laptop, a top of the line modem and a high speed internet and more domains!

HEXONET Q2: How active is the domainer market in South Africa?

Darryl Lopes:

I would say it’s pretty active, but you do not see much .CO.ZA sales in the overseas markets. I network with South African domainers and with those living abroad via email, Facebook and Skype. I hope to see more South African domainers in the future. I would like to see www.thedomains.co.za become an inspiration, the meeting point and hub to start the domaining industry in South Africa. I have only sold .CO.ZA domains because I know the market in depth since I live here and I understand the value of .CO.ZA compared to .COM.

HEXONET Q3: What are the most predominant domain extensions used in South Africa?

Darryl Lopes:

Mostly .CO.ZA. Any company, business or family owned business in South Africa has their own .CO.ZA. If the company started overseas or operate internationally they have both .CO.ZA and .COM (owning both domains). Also note, that most e-commerce stores in South Africa have the .CO.ZA and .COM in which they redirect the .COM to the .CO.ZA. As seen on my website, I brokered www.wantitall.com for www.wantitall.co.za and it now redirects to the .CO.ZA.

HEXONET Q4: What challenges or obstacles do you see for .CO.ZA moving forward?

Darryl Lopes:

The Internet is not naked, meaning in order to have an ADSL line, you have to pay of both your ADSL and have a landline number which you have to rent instead of pay just for just the data you use. Otherwise access to the Internet is fairly cheap on mobile and .CO.ZA domains are also cheap to register. However, the .CO.ZA registry are talking about raising the price of .CO.ZA registrations and renewals, which is not good for domainers and for general growth of the cyberspace.

HEXONET Q5: What trends and opportunities are ahead for .CO.ZA?

Darryl Lopes:

Google, in partnership with Vodacom, is helping small businesses register there own .CO.ZA domain for FREE through the Woza online campaign. There are great opportunities for business and e-commerce to grow in South Africa as more and more people begin to trust shopping online. Also new investors would do well in the open market and would be welcome. South African’s would pay gladly if they were offer products and services that matched international services. As for trends, with the launch of Simfy.co.za, a music streaming service on Monday, August 27, I think music streaming will be on the rise. I have tried the service myself and it’s great! As a result, I picked up music related .CO.ZA domains, so will see in a couple months if it catches on. We will be going from analogue television to digital television and digital decoders will create an overnight business opportunity. Anything digital or digital related domains could be in demand. Geo-payments is also a trend with banks and being able to pay and receive payments with your mobile device. The Internet will definitely grow in South Africa and I would suggest your customers should register a .CO.ZA if available or even broker a deal for a good .CO.ZA domain as the value is sure to rise (especially for people in South Africa). An example is someone in South Africa working a business is more than likely (I would say 80% of the time) will have their business website and email address with a .CO.ZA and NOT .COM as you might think. We are proud to be South African’s and thus we are proud of .CO.ZA!

HEXONET has been growing! It has been an amazing journey the past couple of years and we are ecstatic to announce that we are now managing over a million domains for clients, resellers and partners. The one million domain milestone is a goal that many registrars strive for and HEXONET reached this goal in mid-April of 2012!

First and Foremost – Thank You:

The executives at HEXONET would like to thank our amazing team in Germany and Canada. They are “HEXONET” and without their efforts and commitment, HEXONET would never have been able to achieve this milestone so quickly.

To our loyal customers, resellers, and partners, we are extremely grateful that you have decided to stand with HEXONET. Without your support and all your constant feedback (both good and bad), we could not be the company we are today. Our promise is to stay humble, continue to listen, and work everyday to be better for you. Again, many thanks.

A Hard Journey to 1 Million Domains:

1. Like any expanding company we have seen growing pains when it came to our employees. Looking back on both the good and the bad, HEXONET has definitely seen the benefit of bringing in new ideas and minds into our organization. New blood in the company exposed areas we were weak and helped us identify where we could improve. Today the team is as talented and as strong as ever. And we are now looking to add even more amazing people to our team. Many lessons learned and many issues overcome.

2. Handling security as we grow has been a challenge, but we are on top of it. Our biggest attack was about a year ago when HEXONET was hit with a massive DDOS. The attack was on a unprecedented scale with over 2 million queries per second on all our servers generating over 80 Gbits of bandwidth. This DDOS even saturated our upstream provider’s datacenter, one of Europe’s largest Internet hubs. We are happy to announce that through proactive measures and procedures no DDOS attacks has affected HEXONET since this last incident.

Many Successes Along the Way:

1. Our reseller and partner network is growing exponentially. Hosting companies, registrar service providers, domain resellers, domainers, and small businesses are now realizing the strength of HEXONET’s advanced and PROVEN technology platform. In our opinion, for TLDs and especially ccTLDs, no other platform or service compares.

More than a decade ago, nearly all companies designed their systems for a handful of dominant TLDs (COM/NET), HEXONET on the contrary believed that eventually hundreds if not thousands of TLDs would be the norm. So today, while others struggle and even hack every new TLD into their in-congruent systems, HEXONET seamlessly adds new TLDs, as our platform was designed to scale from the very beginning. Even more important is the many years of engineering and operational knowledge held by our staff and engineers. We can answer questions about the smallest operational and architectural nuisances for TLDs, a skill that only reveals itself when working with a registry system for years and years.

2. Our Registrar Operations Center platform (RegistrarOC), has also been garnering a lot of interest as well as clients among large corporate customers. These clients with their own accreditations and a large number of domains now realize that there is a huge cost (time and salaries) to update and maintain their own registrar platform. This is where RegistrarOC steps in and not only saves these companies money, but eliminates a huge operational and engineering burden. Interestingly enough, prominent law firms are now becoming ICANN accredited to manage their clients domains. Since law firms are typically not technical, many have turned to RegistrarOC and HEXONET to manage their accreditations.

3. With HEXONET’s platforms gaining popularity, many newTLDs have even come to us asking for help with running a house registrar of their own. As a result, some .BRAND TLDs have committed to running their own house registrar service through 1API (HEXONET’s house registrar) or through utilizing RegistrarOC.
The Journey Continues – What to Expect:

1. A new and more friendly website launching this summer.

2. A newer and easier to use “orderform” to be progressively released throughout the year. With each release new features will be available for clients.

3. More Control Panel enhancements and upgrades. All these updates are from direct feedback and requests from our clients. Some cool new bulk management features are coming!

4. General public “Domain for Sale” listing service on HEXONET’s domain auction platform PremiumSale.com. The site and auction service at PremiumSale.com has received tremendous feedback and now we are going to opening it up for members to auction off their own domains through the platform.

Even though we surpassed the 1 million domain goal for the company, we are not resting. HEXONET continues to work hard for our customers. Again to all our customers, resellers, and partners, thank you for your support and patronage.

In my series of posts on new TLDs, the goal has always been to inform and provide insight, from the perspective of a registrar. With there being so much focus on ICANN and on registry operators during the initial stages of the nTLD process, we felt the voice of the registrar needed to be heard. This is because, from our perspective, success for any new TLD will greatly depend on its support of registrars.

My first post, “Does HEXONET Have Plans to be a REGISTRY Operator for newTLDs?“, was intended to make it clear that as a long standing registrar, our goal is to make any nTLD a success by doing what we have always done, by being a great registrar and nothing more. My second post, “Choosing a Registry Operator for New TLDs“, was done to help prospective registry operators think critically about there registry platform, probably the single biggest decision that will affect their registry today and for years to come. I wanted to give some key insights on registry platforms from our nearly ten years of operational knowledge as a registrar working with these various solutions and technologies.

Making It Easy for Registrars to Start Selling Your nTLD

Today’s post is to take the next step beyond the ICANN process and registry platforms, to start talking about registrars, the gatekeepers to the end customer. For a prospective registry, the biggest questions about registrars is how to get as many of them on board as quickly as possible. Most registrars are very busy selling domains, supporting domains, managing systems, and simply running their business. And for many registrars, engineering resources are tight or non-existent. As a result, for registrars, choosing to implement a nTLD requires a substantial return on investment.

Given that even adding one nTLD for a registrar is a commitment, how will the possibility of three, four or ten nTLD introductions in a given year affect that choice? Registry operators need to be cognizant of possible slow registrar acceptance and implementation. Sounds a bit scary right? The good news is that HEXONET has a solution called RegistrarOC (Registrar Operations Center) that helps registrar’s quickly, easily, and cost-effectively add any new TLD.

Help for Registrars in a Crowded nTLD Marketplace

Potentially hundreds of nTLDs will be available over the next years. Some of them are listed below. A more complete list of declared and potential applicants has been published by Kieren McCarthy, CEO of .NXT.

What if there was a way for registrars to simply add a nTLD to their sales system with little or no technical effort for registry integration, testing and on-going maintenance? In this scenario, registrars can then offer a nTLD as soon it is available, even offer pre-registration! This is exactly how HEXONET’s RegistrarOC solution helps registry operators and registrars.

HEXONET’s RegistrarOC solution takes away all the technical and engineering overhead for registrars. Designed to be plug and play, once a registrar is connected with the RegistrarOC solution, adding a nTLD is as simple as throwing a switch (add an accreditation and go!). We even help and guide new businesses become accredited or help existing registrars quickly add new accreditations.

HEXONET has successfully managed a comprehensive and extensive portfolio of gTLDs and ccTLDs accreditations for nearly a decade. We specialize in inter-operating with all the registry platforms at industry leading reliability and performance. So with RegistrarOC, not only do registrars plug in to the technology, but more importantly, they also plug in to all the operational and engineering expertise garnered by HEXONET over the years.

Ensure you are in compliance with various ICANN requirements, such as RDE (Registrar Data Escrow), WDRP (Whois-Data-Reminder-Policy), …etc.

Ensure your data is always in-sync with the registry – a highly underestimated task by registrars that is potential very expensive future cost

If you are interested in learning more then either visit the “RegistrarOC” solutions page or send us an email at sales@hexonet.net. We would be happy to arrange a quick conference call to explain the product in more detail.

We have created some fun .XXX Videos. Dot .XXX is a new sponsored Top-Level-Domain designed specifically for the global adult entertainment industry as a trusted brand, globally recognized and extolling responsible and safe behavior. Time will tell if this new sTLD will be successful or if it will disappear off the radar like may other TLDs we have seen in the past. Until date the first results are promising.

At 5:00 p.m. CEST, CentralNic launched its latest domain COM.DE with much success. This offering further broadens CentralNic’s already wide and popular selection of domains. HEXONET throughout the pre-registration phases has seen strong demand for COM.DE domains these past few months and believes that registrations will continue now that it is open to everyone.

HEXONET achieved a near PERFECT score today at the opening of COM.DE with an amazing 97% success rate in obtaining domains pre-registered by HEXONET clients. This success rate is insane considering the number of unique pre-registrations. Once again, resellers and clients are very happy with HEXONET and our advanced technology platform. Find out why you too should place your pre-registrations for future domains with HEXONET.

The same technology for pre-registrations is used as the backbone of our Backordering technology as well. Currently at HEXONET, 18 different TLDs can be backordered with ease. Though we are proud of the selection of TLDs our clients can backorder, we are actually more proud of the success rate our platform is at obtaining valuable expiring domains for them!

Jens Wagner and our team of talented engineers have highly optimized and specialized HEXONET’s backordering and pre-registration technology over years of research and development. And we believe that our technology is best in class at submitting and acquiring domains no matter if it is through the regular pre-registration Go Live , or at domain expiration.

Give HEXONET’s pre-registration and backordering services a try and see why our customers are happy with the service and the technology.

Though HEXONET has no plans to become a Registry Operator ourselves (see recent posting), as an experienced registrar, we have some interesting insights on the operator choices. For those planning on launching a new TLD, this post may be of keen interest.

How HEXONET Would Choose a Registry Operator for a new Top-Level-Domain:

HEXONET would choose a Registry Operator with a proven track record, who clearly has had success managing multiple TLDs. In respect to managing, this means more than 50,000 domains for any one registry. We highly recommend NOT choosing a Registry Operator who is doing this for the first time.

Preferably the Registry Operator would already have experience managing a gTLD (generic Top-Level-Domain) and already implemented many of ICANN’s procedural policies including processes like transactional redemption periods. Not a must-have but a nice-to-have.

Preferably the Registry Operator already has an existing distribution network (depending on the respective TLD and your business plan, this is NOT a MUST)

Choose a Registry Operator with a mature infrastructure so that you can push them on price (economies of scale). A new Registry Operator will have higher capital inputs to recoup and hence likely inflexible on pricing terms.

Choose a Registry Operator who can offer reliable and proven DNS Services. A solid DNS infrastructure is crucial. Make sure the DNS infrastructure is an Anycast solution with a minimum of 6 different DNS cluster installations (preferably 9 cluster locations).

The Registry Operator should have their own in-house registry software that they developed. Operators that purchased their software may not be able to support functional changes you want or may in fact prevent you from developing future services.

Ensure the Registry Operator is known to provide direct and personalized service. With hundreds of new TLDs, some registry operators may simply treat you like a number. Be sure the Registry Operator can accommodate and also time-line new development or registry feature requests for your TLD. Being proactive and having the Registry Operator detail how they will support you can save your TLD from being left in the dust.

The performance of the registry platform is critical for the success of a registry. Slower performing platforms can lead to slow domain searches and potentially even slower response times for more intensive registry transactions. Factor in load considerations also, since the more new TLDs a Registry Operator adds to its platform, the more additional TLDs will impact yours. A good rule of thumb is the 0.3 second mark. If the round trip times for commands take longer than this, be wary.

Choose a Registry Operator who is willing to back up their platform and services with a tight SLA (Service-Level-Agreement).

Lastly, even though price plays an important role, the cheapest option is likely not the best option. Think and plan ahead of the initial launch and proactively define the goals of the TLD for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 years. Determine which Registry Operator has the best platform and team to help your TLD achieve its goals. Again, the cheapest solution may only come back to bite your in your backside.

HEXONET easily integrate with following Registry Operators for New TLDs Awarded to Them:

The above list are just a few and does not include all registry operators that will be offering registry services. HEXONET would be able to integrate with any registry. The above registries would simplify work on our end.

In the event, that you are interested in applying for a newTLD and you would like to get in touch with one of the above registries, please reach out to us and we would be more than happy to make an introduction. Applying for your own TLD is a big step with a lot of investment. If you are unsure of the technology, please feel free to contact us and we would happily give you a quote to provide technical guidance.

Since ICANN’s approval of new Top-Level-Domains, HEXONET has been constantly asked the following question – “Does HEXONET have plans to be a registry operator for new Top-Level-Domains?“.

Answer: Why Re-invent the Wheel?

Even though HEXONET is known for engineering expertise and technical excellence throughout the domain industry, being a registry operator is currently not in our plans. This is because HEXONET believes that the current set of registry operators are best suited to service the up and coming new Top-Level-Domains. The leading registry operators have the knowledge, infrastructure, capacity, and most importantly, the experience for any new TLD to achieve success.

HEXONET has achieved our own success by working with registry operators in innovative ways. We continue to run a highly reliable, lightning fast registrar platform that offers a vast selections of TLDs (one of the widest selections industry-wide). Additionally, we plan to fully integrate our powerful Registrar Operations Center (RegistrarOC) solution with all the new Top-Level-Domains.

For HEXONET, success of any TLD, be it new or existing, requires success throughout the deliver chain – registry, registry operator, and registrar. And our commitment is to work with the registry operators so that HEXONET can be one of the best at the registrar level. Our goal has always been to be the best registrar for resellers and to build the best turn-key solutions for registrars (RegistrarOC) so that anyone can quickly add any TLD (new or existing) without the engineering headache and overhead.

Many companies utterly fail by trying to do too much or chase after something new. HEXONET has been on same course for over a decade, which is to be an exceedingly good registrar and domain platform developer. The road ahead for HEXONET is straight and narrow.